Date published December 7, 2015 by Sarah Vinz. Date updated: March 27, 2017

Writing that is concise presents ideas and information clearly and does not use more words than are truly necessary. Conciseness is an important characteristic of academic writing, especially given how complex the subject matter frequently is.

Two of the biggest enemies of concise writing are inflated phrases and redundancies. It’s easy to think that using more complicated-sounding phrases will give your text a more academic feel, but mostly it just makes it harder to follow.

Using the below strategies will make your writing not only tighter, but also more effective.

Date published October 14, 2015 by Sarah Vinz. Date updated: March 24, 2017

During your writing, you will sometimes encounter passages where you end up repeating yourself quite frequently. Presenting a lot of information in the same way is often the result of not being armed with synonyms or alternative ways to phrase things.

This frequently happens in the introduction section, where you are expected to present the structure (or outline) of your dissertation. Indeed, there are not that many different ways to state what is included in Chapter 2, or are there?